CLASS WARFARE

After languishing in Call of Duty's shadow, BATTLEFIELD 6 now has all the juice

- By Morgan Park

It says something about the state of the FPS that the hype for Battlefield 6 is mostly down to the old, not the new. Here we are, howling at the moon for decades-old modes, 'grounded' character models, classic class setups, and a map from 2011. Series vets are gobbling up this sequel as if we haven't eaten for weeks, while patting Dice on the back for managing to execute a normal Battlefield game.

Dice's last effort tanked expectations, but that's not why Battlefield 6 has impressed me. It's the wider multiplayer culture of 2025—wrung out by years of battle royale banality and meta-pilled ranked modes—that created the conditions for an ordinary Battlefield to be the most exciting FPS of the year.

Place your palm on the pavement, and you can feel the low rumble of a hobby yearning for what we loved 15 years ago: the spectacle of scale, the unserious chaos of vehicular warfare, red grunts vs blue grunts, the permission to make your own rules, and an environment where the guy obsessed with metas is having the least fun. That is the pitch of Battlefield 6, and it's a bullseye.

At least, a bullseye where it matters most. Battlefield 6 multiplayer gets two big thumbs up, with caveats. A 64-player round of Conquest remains a spiritual experience that no other series can touch. My body vibrates with anticipation every time I spawn into a chopper in the heat of battle, hit the deck to revive a squadmate in a smokecloud, or nail a 100-meter headshot from the safety of a mountain perch.